(RNS) — A new Pew Research survey finds that one-third of Americans — both those who say they believe in God and those who say they don’t — trust in a higher power or spiritual force.

This group has a looser interpretation of the transcendent. Some call it God; others don’t.

The survey of 4,729 respondents conducted online in December offers some insight into the diversity of U.S. beliefs. And like other surveys over the past decade, it suggests the number of Americans who believe in God is slowly declining.

“One of the key questions that motivated the study was to get more detail among those who say they don’t believe in God,” said Gregory Smith, associate director of research at Pew. “Among those people who say ‘no’ in a straightforward way when asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’ what are they rejecting? Are they rejecting belief in God or a higher power altogether?”

In the survey, those who answered that they do not believe in God were asked a follow-up question, whether they believed in “some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe.”

To be sure, a majority, if a slim one — 56 percent — say they believe in the conventional all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God of the Bible.

Then there are the hardcore disbelievers: about 10 percent who say they don’t believe in the God of the Bible or a higher power.

One-third of U.S. adults believe in a higher power of some kind, but not in God as described in Bible. Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center

But among the so-called “nones” — a broad category of atheists, agnostics and those who answer “none of the above” on questions about religion — fully 72 percent believe in a higher power of some kind.

Two previous Pew surveys found that belief in God generally is falling. A 2007 Pew survey tabulated belief in God at 92 percent; by 2014 it was 89 percent. This most recent poll, though methodologically different — it was an online poll as opposed to a telephone poll — put the number at 80 percent.

Belief in God as described in the Bible is highest among Christians — 80 percent, the survey found. Evangelicals and black Protestants had the highest rates of belief in a God of the Bible — 91 and 92 percent respectively. That number falls to 72 percent among mainline Protestants and 69 percent among Catholics. Only one-third of Jews, by contrast, believe in the God of the Bible. (The survey did not include enough respondents who were Muslim or members of other faiths to be included.)

The survey also showed that:

Belief in the God of the Bible declines with age.

Those under age 50 viewed God as less powerful and less involved in earthly affairs than do older Americans.

Among college graduates, only 45 percent believe in the God of the Bible.

“The Ancient of Days” by William Blake. Image courtesy of Creative Commons

Views of God also tend to differ by political party and race. Seventy percent of Republicans believe in the God of the Bible, while only 45 percent of Democrats do. But among Democrats, there are big differences in views of God when it comes to race; 70 percent of non-white Democrats believe in the God of the Bible — comparable to the rate among Republicans.

Belief in a higher power was found in every segment of the religiously unaffiliated population. Overall, 70 percent of the nones said they believe in a spiritual force. Among agnostics, it was 62 percent. Even among atheists, nearly 1 in 5 (or 18 percent) said they believe in a higher power.

Just why so many agnostics, and even atheists, believe in a higher power is a matter of debate.

Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa who studies the nonreligious, said some people may say they believe in a higher power to avoid the social stigma and even discrimination atheists face.

“To what extent are they saying that to avoid prejudice is an interesting question,” Cragun said. He pointed to studies suggesting that white heterosexual men are the most likely to say they’re atheist because they have a certain social privilege that others don’t, and therefore may feel less at risk in making such a statement.

Others say the category of belief with its binary options — yes or no — can’t fully account for the diversity of human experience. Transcendence, for example, can be a supernatural experience but also a natural one, said Elizabeth Drescher, a professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University and the author of “Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones.”

Some people may have faith in life’s animating force or in the human spirit, she said.

“There are lots of people who experience things in their lives that feel mysterious or unexplainable or awe-inspiring and who might logically identify as nonreligious or nonbelieving, but who nonetheless have a sense that we don’t know everything,” Drescher said. “The reality of people’s experience is much more complex and nuanced.”

The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 4,729 respondents was plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Now here is a silly question, how many of the responders were from religious backgrounds which are not the Abrahamic ones?

Hindu, Buddhists, Bahá’í, and even Animist faith groups are becoming larger in this country by dint of immigration demographics for the last 40 years.

How would they be counted?

Such groups would be those who believe in a higher power but of course by their nature not believe in God of the Bible, nor would they simply be “spiritual, but not religious”. Even the use of “God” as a singular would be incorrect for most of these faiths.

My guess, I get the feeling a lot of these kinds of surveys would just go the lazy route and lump them into the “Nones” rather than avoid the Abrahamic biases in the questions. I could be wrong here.

Only 56% believe in the biblical nonsense, and less than half of people under age 50 believe in the biblical God! That is way down from a few years ago….20% don’t believe at all, except for maybe some spiritual woo they feel during Yoga, etc.

And 10% are pure Atheist — No god, no spiritual mumbo-jumbo, no BS!! …Pew found this was about 6% back in 2014…Atheists have almost doubled in just a few years….There is hope !!

Agreed. A “God” by any other name is still a “God”. I think people say they believe in a “higher power” without really stopping to think, or having a clear idea of what they are talking about. It is just a comforting thing to say, and may as the writer says be more acceptable to their acquaintances, cause less trouble.

“God of the Bible” appears to be problematic for the survey’s mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews for a very good reason: a high percentage of members of all three religions can nuance a progressive view of God in the Bible, which leads them to reject a tidy, all-or-nothing belief in the biblical God. As a mainline Protestant, my recognition of the evolution of the understanding of God in the Bible, from the early anthropomorphic, tribal view, toward a more complex, universal understanding makes it difficult for me to say I believe in the “God of the Bible,” while having a deep belief in the God who is found in the Bible.

Hmm. One in five atheists say they believe in a “higher power”, knowing full well that the specific phrase is always interpreted, even in professional polls like this one, as a backdoor code-phrase for God.

Question for you: Why are you atheists doing this?
Why ain’t the standard revisionist escape-hatch “lack of belief in a god” definition, gittin’ the atheistic job done for you guys?

If there are people here who “trust in a higher power … in the universe”, or who “believe in a higher power of some kind” – tell us, please: it’s “HIGHER” THAN what or whom, actually, this “power”? And how would you know that anyway? Neither this article nor the Pew survey, see, cares to elaborate.

There are many false gods, just as there are many false religions which do not teach the truth about the “only one true God” who created all things (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 3:4; Revelation 3:14 concerning Jesus, the “beginning of the creation of God”).

The “god” of this world and enemy of God is Satan the Devil (John 8:44; 14:30; Ephesians 2:2; 1 John 5:19). He is using his influence to mislead mankind (Revelation 12:7-12), and turn them away from the only true God.

The only true God and Creator of all things and persons is Yahweh, Hebrew from the Tetragrammaton, or Jehovah (Psalm 83:18, King James Version), who is “the most high over all the earth.”

Jehovah is not a triune God (as many religions teach). That is because “only” Jesus is his son and the Messiah (Matthew 3:16,17); the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29); the King of his Father’s government (Isaiah 9:6, 7); our mediator (1 Timothy 2:5); and the perfect ransom sacrifice for all imperfect mankind (Matthew 20:28).

The holy spirit is God’s active force which he uses to accomplish his purposes, and is not a “person.”

A famous showdown took place at Mount Carmel between Jehovah and Baal:

Likely because Baal, believed to be the owner of the sky, was regarded by his worshipers as the giver of rains and fertility, a drought was ordered by Elijah, a prophet of Jehovah (1 Kings 17:1).

After 3 years and 6 months of drought, Baal having proved unable to bring an end to the drought in answer to many appeals undoubtedly made by his priests and worshipers, Elijah summoned all the people to Mount Carmel to witness the great test as to who is the true God.

That test resulted in the grand humiliation of the Baal worshipers and the slaughter of 450 Baal prophets.

Jehovah, and NOT Baal, then brought rain to end the drought (1King 18:18-46; James 5:7).

So will Jehovah again be vindicated as the only true God in the near future, when his kingdom, or heavenly government, puts an end to all human governments and replaces them (Daniel 2:44).???☝️

When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist with complete immersion, was anointed with holy spirit, and then became the Messiah (Matthew 3:16, 17), he did not receive a “person” inside of him; just God’s active force.

The same can be said for the large number of Christians who were anointed with holy spirit at Pentecost, and spoke in different languages (Acts 2:1-11), which gave them that ability; as well as Cornelius, the Gentile (Acts 10:44, 45).

Both Jehovah God and Christ Jesus are spirit persons (John 4:24; 1 Corinthians 15:45) with personal names. The holy spirit is not a person, nor does it have a personal name.

The model prayer Jesus gave for us to follow is addressed only to our Father in heaven (Matthew 6:9), and is not to any other person; just as Jesus always prayed to his Father, (John 17:1), who is the only person we should worship.

According to a major Pew Research Center study conducted in 2017, over 70 percent of Russians identify as Orthodox Christians, up from just over a third in 1991, and Orthodox-majority countries tend to believe women should hold traditional roles. In Russia, 36 percent of those polled said women should obey their husbands and have a social responsibility to bear children. [aligns with Ephesians 5:22, Colossians 3:18 and 1 Peter 3:1].

Orthodoxy, Putin and the West: Buchanan, a proponent of the religious right, of course knows. Like Putin, he is convinced, that God is not on the side of the West’s debauchery — by which they may in fact mean the West’s emphasis on freedom and objection to discrimination of any sort. Buchanan must have had more than a bad day at the office when he wrote: “Putin is tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic, secular and social revolution coming out of the West.” He believes that “Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-dr-john-chryssavgis/orthodoxy-putin-and-the-w_b_5302368.html

Because there are more fictional forces and powers than just the Christian God, silly. Wiccans and druids, for example, revere nature spirits. Shintos honor a wide range of animist powers. And many new-agers subscribe to a vague “spiritual force throughout the universe” theory. None of them believe in the Christian God, so they’re atheists.

Multifaith diversity is condemned in Exodus 23:33. Christians are instructed in both 2 Corinthians 6:16-18 and 2 John 9-11, to separate themselves from the followers of non-Christian religions. 1 John 2:22 states that those who deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, i.e. the followers of non-Christian religions and atheists, are Antichrists.

1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
b : attributed to an invisible agent (such as a ghost or spirit)

• A constant cycle of reincarnation until enlightenment is reached and belief that various beings (angels?, tinkerbells? etc) exist that we, as mortals, cannot comprehend makes for a no on Sikhism.

Added details available upon written request.

A quick search will put the kibosh on any other groups calling themselves a religion.

e.g. Taoism

“The origins of Taoism are unclear. Traditionally, Lao-tzu who lived in the sixth century is regarded as its founder. Its early philosophic foundations and its later beliefs and rituals are two completely different ways of life. Today (1982) Taoism claims 31,286,000 followers.

Legend says that Lao-tzu was immaculately conceived by a shooting star; carried in his mother’s womb for eighty-two years; and born a full grown wise old man. “

That “theory” comes from a misreading or mistranslation of Genesis 1. You might read it. “In the Beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was an endless void.” People read void as “empty, nothing was there” thus creation from nothing. Void however has two meanings. The second meaning is useless and without effect. As when we say a contract is null and void.

Basically a proper reading would be “In the beginning what was there was useless and without effect until it took on form.”

Read John 1 to learn what was there. “In the beginning was the Logos” Logos has also been mistranslated as “word”. Actually “logos’ for the Greek that invented the word, referred to the principles and processes at work in the creation and maintenance of the universe.

I believe the studies asking about beliefs are different than those asking about identities. The latter asks “What is your religion?” If you say Hindu, they count you as Hindu. The study in this article is more about belief. In prior Pew studies, the specific question is “Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?”
The other problem with “the God of the Bible” is that it would possibly exclude Jews and Muslims who would otherwise be counted as “believing in God.”

Just that terms such as ruach ha-kodesh from the Hebrew Bible are grammatically feminine. The words the Septuagint uses for ruach ha-kodesh are the same as the New Testament does when translated Holy Spirit.

John 14:26 ESV / 2,713 helpful votes
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

John 14:15-17 ESV
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

In the original Hebrew the phrase ‘without form and void’ appears as ‘tohu vavohu’ and is a difficult one to translate because it is a play on words. The Hebrew language can describe the ‘absence of things’ in one or two words WITHOUT using the negation form.

The English translation speaks about a certain condition that was characterized by the ABSENCE of form or ‘FORMLESS,’ the original Hebrew describes the condition of the earth as ‘Tohu Va-Vohu’ which literally means an ’empty desert’ – a desert without water.

The English description makes one imagine a total mess and chaos. The Hebrew description does not describe a mess but an empty, waterless land.

I do not see why a belief in God is necessary to the possibility of an afterlife. Nature evolved human intelligence, a real fact that is even more amazing than the speculative concept of God, and I thi k it’s quite possible that nature could evolve a way for individual consciousness to continue after death.

He is indeed. Traditional Christianity has historically relied on the police/violence power of government to enforce its beliefs on others. Only recently have we been able to get beyond this partnership of religion and government in how we are governed, but the battle is not yet over yet.

Nature ,as far as we know, is not conscious. Life and human intelligence evolved due to the process of natural selection. This process selects properties that increase the probability of reproduction. I think the chance of nature creating an afterlife is very low. If so it would be due to some other unknown process.

You don’t understand what you think CitizenWhy killed. Human intelligence, emotions, even primitive morality are the result of natural selection. We are responsible for using these amazing traits creatively.

I use the term non-believer. If asked, I explain that I only believe in that which can be shown to be true through evidence and reason. To believe in the supernatural requires faith. Faith is best described as pretending to know what you don’t know. I won’t do that. This position is a good response to a believer who claims he doesn’t have enough faith to be an Atheist.

In many Buddhist sects their is no God.
Everyone is capable of Enlightenment and Buddahood. There is however a mystic law, the law of Karma, that determines your fortune both in this life and the next depending on your actions. I don’t know how this would fit in the survey.

I think that if anyone knows, this physicist does. His book is written for the general public:
“A Universe from Nothing” Book by Lawrence M. Krauss
School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and director of its Origins Project.

I think that if anyone knows, this physicist does. His book is written for the general public:
“A Universe from Nothing” Book by Lawrence M. Krauss
School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and director of its Origins Project.

(1) Sarah Jones, “Inside the Spectacular Implosion of Religion News Service: The country’s leading religious news wire hired a new publisher in 2016. Then it all fell apart”, The New Republic, April 27, 2018.

The God of the Bible, Jehovah, is mocked and criticized by many, claiming that he does not care about mankind, or that he is responsible for terrible things happening on earth, which statements are all false.

He is also claimed to be a triune God, which is not what the Bible teaches about him.

He will soon be vindicated as the only true God, as well as a person who has an intense love for mankind on earth, and who will soon put an end to all problems we now have, including death (Revelatiom 21:3,4).

Fran, I believe three in one. I cannot explain it, but can suggest something that may help a little as no one can really explain the Trinity of three separate persons, yet one.
Closest I can come….I think the Trinity can be compared to water….you have ice, snow, and steam. Each one is water, but each one is still different.
Christ is in us which means that God is in us, as Christ taught: John 17:23 – English Standard Version
I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” The Holy Spirit isn’t mentioned there, but I believe He is inside us also.
They are all God.
I hope that helps.

The people that don’t believe in God The Father have not read the Bible. It’s plain and simple. Colossians 2:9 for in Jesus dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead. What does that mean? It means that Jesus is The Father, Jesus The Son/Christ and Jesus The Holy Spirit. Please read close. YHWH/YHVH/YAHWEY/JEHOVAH not the Father of Jesus. These names come from the Aramaic language which did not exist until 900 BC. When Jesus The Father spoke to Moses and when he used his finger to write his name on the wall it was an old Paleo-Hebrew. Just like the Greek when his name was written it was Iesous. It is not pronounced EA-SOUZ. If there is a consonant after the letter I the name has the I sound. If there is a vowel after the I, The name has the J sound. By rule the old is silent therefore when the apostles spoke to the Christ he heard the name of Jesus. Yes what time later Paleo Hebrew and the Greeks developed the J for the J sound. Today’s Khazarian Jews are not God’s chosen people. They are the synagogue of Satan impersonating the ancient Adamic Hebrew Israelites. You cannot be both. It’s these same lying Jews that say YAHWEY is the Creator. Wake up. Jesus The Father is the God of the Old Testament. He is the God who ordered the death of the Canaanites. The people that make the claims that the God of the Old Testament was a cold vile killer do not understand the circumstances. These were black/negro/Chay/Nephilim giants. They carried the fallen angel seed line. The seed of pure evil. The very same thing happened when young King David was seen by the black/negro/Chay/Nephilim giant Goliath, He laughed at him and made fun of him and said this little ruddy white boy didn’t have a chance. Young David held on to his faith in Jesus The Father and he slew the Nephilim giant Goliath and cut off his head. The seed line stayed pure, and alive from young David on through to the birth of Jesus. It was Satan‘s goal to utilize his fallen angels, & the Nephilim in any way possible to corrupt the seed line that would lead to Jesus Christ. If the seed line was corrupted then there could be no Messiah. People don’t understand what God The Father did in the Old Testament was to insure the seed line stayed pure so nothing interfered with the birth of Jesus Christ so Jesus could die in our place and pay our sin debt in full. Past present and future.

Rejection of religion is fine so long as the person believes in God. The plain belief in God with good does not need to be Christian or Muslim. I don’t believe in the bible. I believe in God without the bible.

Atheism is any person or thing that chooses not to believe in God for any or no reason at all. By will full choice I don’t believe in God. This is atheist even if the person claims any religion or not.

The belief in plain goodness can be included with atheism but this is not a religion either .
Believers in God don’t have to be Christian or Muslim they can be open or plain .

Many people get involved with organized religion as a way of being friendly they don’t take it as literally true.

Atheism mostly comes up if religious comes up in a setting it’s not supposed to.
If Christians try to convert a school then this makes atheist come out against it. Any Religion activates atheism the most.

Faith in God does not always active atheism. Its trying to over push God on to others. Its having to many rules.

Its better to ask the God question this way. Some non believers in God don’t claim or say atheism because they don’t like the word. Some believers in God are not Christians or religious but plain faith in God and goodness.

So without adding any labels do you believe in God or not. Yes or no now in this context all forms of non belief in God count as No. All forms of belief in God count as yes. some people will say both yes and no this means they count both yes and no to be fine or correct..so both means yes to God.

Yes. No. Both so 3 answers. Both means yes but were not going off the bible. Plain God is fine